To Make War, Presidents Lie

When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie. Surveying our history, we see a clear pattern. Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war. The enormous losses of life, property, and liberty that Americans have sustained in wars have occurred in large part because of the public's unwarranted trust in what their leaders told them before leading them into war.

In 1898, President William McKinley, having been goaded by muscle-flexing advisers and jingoistic journalists to make war on Spain, sought divine guidance as to how he should deal with the Spanish possessions, especially the Philippines, that US forces had seized in what ambassador John Hay famously described as a "splendid little war."

Evidently, his prayer was answered, because the president later reported that he had heard "the voice of God," and "there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them."

In truth, McKinley's motivations had little if anything to do with uplifting the people whom William H. Taft, the first Governor-General of the Philippines, called "our little brown brothers," but much to do with the political and commercial ambitions of influential expansionists such as Captain Alfred T. Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and their ilk. In short, the official apology for the brutal and unnecessary Philippine-American War was a mendacious gloss.

The Catholic Filipinos evidently did not yearn to be "Christianized" in the American style, at the point of a Springfield rifle, and they resisted the US imperialists as they had previously resisted the Spanish imperialists. The Philippine-American War, which officially ended on July 4, 1902, but actually dragged on for many years in some islands, cost the lives of more than 4,000 US troops, more than 20,000 Filipino fighters, and more than 220,000 Filipino civilians, many of whom perished in concentration camps eerily similar to the relocation camps into which US forces herded Vietnamese peasants some sixty years later.

When World War I began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson's sympathies clearly lay with the British. Nevertheless, he quickly proclaimed US neutrality and urged his fellow Americans to be impartial in both thought and deed. Wilson himself, however, leaned more and more toward the Allied side as the war proceeded. Still, he recognized that the great majority of Americans wanted no part of the fighting in Europe, and in 1916 he sought reelection successfully on the appealing slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War."

Soon after his second inauguration, however, he asked Congress for a declaration of war, which was approved, although six senators and fifty members of the House of Representatives had the wit or wisdom to vote against it. Wilson promised this war would be "the war to end all wars," but wars aplenty have taken place since the guns fell silent in 1918, leaving their unprecedented carnage -- nearly nine million dead and more than twenty million wounded, many of them hideously disfigured or crippled for life, as well as perhaps ten million civilians who died of starvation or disease as a result of the war's destruction of resources and its interruption of commerce.

And what did the United States or the world gain? Only a twenty-year reprieve before the war's smoldering embers burst into flame again.

After World War I, Americans felt betrayed, and they resolved never to make the same mistake again. Yet, just two decades later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the maneuvers by which he hoped to plunge the nation once again into the European cauldron. Unsuccessful in his naval provocations of the Germans in the Atlantic, he eventually pushed the Japanese to the wall by a series of hostile economic-warfare measures, issued clearly unacceptable ultimatums, and induced them to mount a desperate military attack, most devastatingly on the US forces he concentrated at Pearl Harbor.

Campaigning for reelection in Boston on October 30, 1940, FDR had sworn: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Well, Peleliu ain't Peoria. Roosevelt was lying when he made his declaration, just as he had lied repeatedly before and would lie repeatedly for the remainder of his life. (Stanford historian David M. Kennedy, careful not to speak too stridently, refers to FDR's "frequently cagey misrepresentations to the American public.")

Yet many, many Americans trusted this inveterate liar, sad to say, with their lives, and during the war more than 400,000 of them paid the ultimate price.

Among FDR's many political acolytes was a young congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who eventually and, for the world, unfortunately, clawed his way to the presidency. As chief executive, he had to deal with vital questions of war and peace, and like his beloved mentor, he relied heavily on lying to the public. In October 1964, seeking to gain election by portraying himself as the peace candidate (in contrast to the alleged mad bomber Barry Goldwater), LBJ told a crowd at Akron University: "We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

In 1965, however, shortly after the start of his elected term in office, Johnson exploited the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, itself based on a fictitious account of an attack on US naval forces off Vietnam, and initiated a huge buildup of US forces in Southeast Asia that would eventually commit more than 500,000 American "boys" to fight an "Asian boy's" war.

Some 58,000 US military personnel would lose their lives in the service of LBJ's vanity and political ambitions, not to speak of the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians killed and wounded in the melee. Chalk up another catastrophe to a lying American president.

Now President George W. Bush is telling the American people that we stand in mortal peril of imminent attack by Iraqis or their agents armed with weapons of mass destruction. Having presented no credible evidence or compelling argument for his characterization of the alleged threat, he simply invites us to trust him, and therefore to support him as he undertakes what once would have been called naked aggression.

Well, David Hume long ago argued that just because every swan we've seen was white, we cannot be certain that no black swan exists. So Bush may be telling the truth. In the light of history, however, we would be making a long-odds bet to believe him.

I understand and appreciate your sentiments, and share most of them myself. There's been a lot of very foolish politicking with dictators, these past thirty years, usually under the justification that "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

Mark Steyn has pointed out that this slogan works better if reversed: "He may be our son of a bitch, but he's still a son of a bitch." Playing footsie with power-mad egotists was always a mistake. It's bitten us on the rump several times. Maybe we've unlearned that particular error; at least, one can hope. But we must also deal with the problems we've created, for ourselves and others, without getting overly hung up on our embarrassment at having created them.

As for "the absurdity of going to war over WMD," I'm afraid we'll have to disagree about that. Saddam, being "rationally evil," might never use WMD outside his borders, but the linkages between his regime and "irrationally evil" groups such as al-Qaeda and the Palestinain irredentist-terrorists are strong, and I fear what they might acquire from him too much to take a relaxed view.

For further thoughts, please see:

Raising A Clenched Fist

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

there was not one resignation, one demand for a resignation, or one dismissal from our trillion dollar central intelligence aparatus over 9/11-- and yet that is the aparatus who is claiming Saddam is the next Hitler. Rather the whole thing is the fault of Saddam and the minimum wage baggage handlers.

Clinton was already gone. 9/11 is *his* legacy.

And Saddam needs to go. Are you one of the Saddamites who would let him continue his threat...Saddam's murderous past, his two invasions of neighboring countries, his open threats against the US, his firing on US and UK forces, his payments to the families of suicide-bombers, his harboring of known terrorists (Abu Nidal ring any bells?), his acceptance of terrorist training camps in Iraq, and his history of using WMD's on innocent civilians...(as the good Teacher317 listed)?

Do you vote for Dems?

I see the WMD rational in the same light as British war hawks who believed in a pre-emptive strike against the Kaiser before he could challenge the supremacy of the British Navy. The assination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand was met with a collective sigh of "at last, we can go to war."

The rational was so abstract and riddled with 'secret' agenda that it slowly declined to simple racist absurdities that the "Huns will eat your babies." Of course, the end result was collective suicide, the rise of Nazism and Communism and the enshrinement of Churhill, who was one of those 19-teen war hawks, as a neo-Con hero.

I'll answer your questions but then you answer mine. No, I vote Republican. I would support a letter of marque and reprisal to hire a company to remove Saddam from power for his involvement in WTC I, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and 9/11. I do not support a war against Saddam for violating United Nations rules on WMD.

Do you support UN wars?

Do you believe that if citizens were allowed to carry weapons on to airplanes as they were allowed to prior to the 1970s that 9/11 would have happened?

Do you support UN wars?

Hate the UN. The only way to get us outta them and them outta us is a Conservative Republican majority electing strict Constitutionalists to the bench. We are America. We are not subject to the United Nations. President Bush has made that very clear. If they happen to follow us into a war, good for them, but it makes no nevermind to US.

Do you believe that if citizens were allowed to carry weapons on to airplanes as they were allowed to prior to the 1970s that 9/11 would have happened?

As an American and a Vermonter, I carry a handgun with me wherever I go. (The carbine is for fun.) With a Republican majority voting strict Constitutionalists to the bench, every American can again enjoy the God-given right to keep and bear arms to protect ourselves from enemies, both foreign and domestic.

If 9/11 could have been prevented with handguns carried by airline passengers (and it may well could have, but then, the terrorists woulda had guns, too) but wasn't, it is because of the Liberal Democrats and the law-making rather than law-abiding judges they have appointed to the bench. Don't get me going.

"Basically" to make your point, you ignore Saddam's murderous past, his two invasions of neighboring countries, his open threats against the US, his firing on US and UK forces, his payments to the families of suicide-bombers, his harboring of known terrorists (Abu Nidal ring any bells?), his acceptance of terrorist training camps in Iraq, and his history of using WMD's on innocent civilians. How shallow is that?

You left off an assassination attempt on former President Bush. This act alone has largely been ignored, but I see that one act alone as sufficient grounds to remove Saddam.

I wrote this Robert Higgs a note:

You, sir, and Saddam Hussein are Butchers and LIARS !!

And I sent him the link and the text of this article:

Democrat Leadership Should Control Rank-And-File Saddam Apologists

WASHINGTON, Sep. 30— House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts, Jr. (R-Okla.) issued the following statement on the mission to Baghdad by Congressmen David Bonior (D-Mich.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.):

“It’s one thing to have a civil discourse on the merits of a preemptive strike or war. It’s another to fly to Iraq and take the word of a tyrant over the American president and the American people.

“At a time when America is fighting a war on terror, talk like this only helps enemies of freedom.

“Instead of lobbying for Saddam, these guys ought to come home and lobby Senate Democrats who are blocking important priorities for Americans like a Department of Homeland Security, prescription drug coverage and pension security.

“Three Democrat members of Congress in Iraq defending Saddam Hussein ought to warrant a reprimand from Minority Leader Gephardt. Surely they do not speak for the Democratic Caucus. Or do they?”

Curious: What are some examples of pacifists getting more people killed than any hawk?

WWII. The appeasers of Germany. Nobody wanted to listen to Churchill's warnings until all hell broke loose. Governments can sign as many agreements with tyrants as they wish, listen to as many promises as desired, but this does not prevent bloodshed. So, pacifists and quislings caused tremendous death in this case and those willing to fight saved innumerable lives.

Hooray for you, MeekNMing! I hope he thinks about it gravely.

The first and most pervasive lie of the article is this: When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie.

The final and most pervasive lie of the article is this: So Bush may be telling the truth. In the light of history, however, we would be making a long-odds bet to believe him.

Explained by a master of reasoning here.

I read the Goldberg article and none of the arguments he cites are anything more than leftist tripe or red herrings. I would like to see a serious debate with conservative objections discussed. I would like to see a conservative deal in which war with Iraq is traded for withdrawal of U.S. forces from some of the dozens of countries we protect.

I am tired of unabashed empire builders who claim to be conservative arguing against convenient red herrings. To the scare mongers on this thread: you are either one of them or you have been duped.

Are you saying that the Presidents and cites that Higgs gave are lies? Are you saying that FDR did NOT purposely allow Pearl Harbor to happen? Think carefully on this one, because it is WELL documented. Wouldn't you call it mis-leading on FDR's part to deliberately mislead the public about what happened at Pearl Harbor, when FDR and the powers that be, KNEW well in advance what was going to happen to Pearl Harbor, yet they chose to purposely keep that information from those in command at Pearl Harbor?????

Pearl Harbor could have been properly warned, and the damages significantly reduced and MANY, MANY lives spared, not to mention saving most of not all of the fleet, but hey, then the people might not have been angered enough to jump into the war. The people were deliberately mislead!

'They' have been conditioned to except a contrived debate that pits "patriotic Conservatives" versus "anti-American leftist." They are armless to Conservative criticism and tend to choose "Fifth Columnist" (incidentally, a term coined by the fascist Franco--does the War Party appreciate the Orwellian poliitcal speak?)or "anti-Semite" to fend off any critics.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.